Secrets of a Ladies Man

The Ladies Man. A guy who has unexplainable ease around the female kind that baffles his companions. He is almost always seen with some girl, usually a large group of them, entertaining them with his perfect sense of humour and impressive knowledge of all things. He is what most guys aspire to be, and if they can't, they seek to be around that guy.

I have been called that guy. I have been called a Ladies Man.

I have dorm mates who have, on numerous occasions, asked me what my secret is to my skill with the lady folk (but in less old west terms). They want to watch me and study my actions and figure out what I'm doing that makes me able to hang out with several girls at any given time. When someone asked a girl to give one word to describe me, they couldn't choose just one and opted for "social butterfly." Facebook even said my Native American name would be "Walks with Ladies." This Ladies Man stuff is kinda...cool. Ok, the watching thing was a little creepy, but overall the comments have been cool. And not cool in the sense that I deserve this. I just never saw myself in this situation. Ever.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaait a sec...did I just say that I never saw myself as a Ladies Man?
Yup. And I still don't.

You may be shocked. You may be confused. You may be wondering who in their right mind would ever refer to me as a Ladies Man. Or maybe you're barely conscious and decided to read something to kill time before going to bed at 2 in the morning, like I'm doing right now. But the biggest question that I perceive you asking is...
Why?

1. I'm awful at the art of communication
You know that cord or nerve or whatever that connects the brain to the mouth? I think mine is severed, or at least frayed. The elegant words in my brain that say exactly what I want them to come out as a bunch of letters that I somehow by chance put together into words. Why do you think I blog? The connection to my fingers seems to be a lot less...broken. I screw up simple words on an hourly basis. I forget words that would perfectly fit into the situation until 3 days later. The perfect joke or comeback is forgotten until immediately after the conversation switches and its too late. I'm just not good at that saying words thing.

"Come on, Dayton." You may say. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You're a fine speaker and everyone does those things. How does this make you not a Ladies Man?"

I haven't finished.

2. I'm way too mental.
Not mental as in lock me in a padded room with a white jacket. Mental as in Sherlock Holmes. I play sequences in my mind a million times before actually getting around to it. I even rehearse lines and comebacks in my mind to prepare for the perfect situation. I see the world as a movie in my head with myself as the hero and the good guy that the girl eventually comes to. Though, saying I'm not the star in my own mind movie would label as padded-room mental. But I like to think things through. When I don't, and act on the fly, I think it over after I've finished and realized how much better I could have done it (though I don't do that nearly as much anymore. I practice appearing less crazy). However, this doesn't explain my love for improv. Maybe I let my mind release some of the more crazy, pent-up stuff. Who knows.
So how does this make me a bad Ladies Man? You would think a healthy thought process is what I would need.

It's beyond healthy. It's so healthy, its unhealthy. Something that doesn't bother me very much in the beginning can end up sending me into a depression after a few hours. Emotions for (and against) other people can leave deep scars that aren't so easy to repair with duct tape. And you though duct tape fixes everything. I can be sitting in bed and be so consumed with my thoughts that I can't sleep because I'm so worked up over something.

Yes, I'm crazy. Moving on.

3. I'm actually really nervous around girls.
WHAT!? It's true. It takes me several mental roller coasters to finally go up and talk to a girl I don't know (kinda like the first blog on this thing). It takes a similar amount to sit with one, or talk with one. And these are girls I'm just friends with. Imagine ones that I have a thing for. So many roller coasters that my brain is on the verge of loosing it's knowledge. Thankfully, it doesn't, because that would be awful to clean up. Q-Tips only have so much range. However, I can get over multiple loop-de-loops with more familiarity, which leads to more relaxation. I have matured over the 15 year old mind.

However, I'm still forgetting one thing. How am I still "so good" with the ladies? I do hang out with a lot of girls and get along with them really well. With these points, you may wonder what black magic I've played with to gain my incredible anti-Dayton powers. Which would be insulting, because my power actually comes from a suit I wear under my clothing at all times.

Just kidding. No really, I am. Seriously, just a joke.

My "power" comes from not seeing girls as girls, but as people. Well DUH. But think about it for a second. Girls are intimidating. They have a whole different way of looking at life that us guys and a whole different way of approaching life. Basically, they're a whole bunch different, and different is scary. Think of how people reacted to this in the past, by makes different races slaves and women as lesser people. We don't know what to do with different. So look at them the same. I tend to place my values and mental processes in other people to give myself a sense of understanding about them. For example, if they stopped in the middle of a conversation, I would assume that because I would stop if I couldn't think of anything to say, they must be doing that as well. Of course this gets me into trouble occasionally, since, as you can see, not many people have my mind. But it helps remove that barrier that sees girls as different beings. They want to hang out and just chill like guys do. They can be stupid and random and crazy like guys. Of course, there are limits to treating them like guys, because they still are different, but if you treat them as a friend, then they don't become so intimidating anymore.

Respect is also a major thing for me. Girls, at least this is what I've gathered from TV, like a chivalrous man. As Christians, we are supposed to treat others greater than ourselves, but I treat girls a bit above that. Many times I go for the gentlemanly approach over words because, well, I'm not so good at speaking them. I also figure that girls deserve our attention. Why? I dunno. They just do.

Finally, I like hanging around girls because, well...they're pretty. Not to say that the only reason I hang out with certain girls and not others is due to looks, because that would be obscenely shallow. But in all honestly, when I first see a girl that I don't know and want to talk to her, all I have to work with is her outward appearance. I do use the physical attraction initially to meet girls, but that's really all I use it for. After that, I figure out her personality and quirks and such, which is the true deciding factor in who I hang out with. People who I get along with well and don't aggravate me after 5 minutes are usually good for me.  I may see the most gorgeous girl ever, but if I discover she's a huge jerk, then there's no real point in hanging out.

There may be other things that draw me to hang out with a lot of girls. Maybe its because girls are more mature and I've always been a more mature guy. Maybe it's because girls like to talk a lot and I don't. Who knows. All I know is that I don't fit the format of the Ladies Man, but somehow, I am one.

Cool.